We prove a necessary and sufficient condition for embeddability of an operator system into ${\mathcal{O}}_{2}$. Using Kirchberg’s theorems on a tensor product of ${\mathcal{O}}_{2}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{\infty }$, we establish results on their operator system counterparts ${\mathcal{S}}_{2}$ and ${\mathcal{S}}_{\infty }$. Applications of the results, including some examples describing $C^{\ast }$-envelopes of operator systems, are also discussed.

We prove that an operator system is (min, ess)-nuclear if its $C^{\ast }$ -envelope is nuclear. This allows us to deduce that an operator system associated to a generating set of a countable discrete group by Farenick et al. [‘Operator systems from discrete groups’, Comm. Math. Phys.329(1) (2014), 207–238] is (min, ess)-nuclear if and only if the group is amenable. We also make a detailed comparison between ess and other operator system tensor products and show that an operator system associated to a minimal generating set of a finitely generated discrete group (respectively, a finite graph) is (min, max)-nuclear if and only if the group is of order less than or equal to three (respectively, every component of the graph is complete).